Being Nice, What a Good Idea

November 30, 2011

Christmas FM is back with a bang this year and this year the deserving recipient charity is Focus Ireland. Texts cost €1 and all profits go to Focus. In Dublin, you can find it on your dial at 94.3fm. All DJs donate their time for free, and the station is co-sponsored by EBS and the Irish Daily Mail.

The mechanic is simple; text in your request and they’ll play it on air. It’s all so clean; it’s so easy to donate, you get something you want and you get to give a little to charity at the same time. Yes, as you might have guessed, this post has a hint of a plug about it…

The station has been a real success since its launch; earning €35k for ISPCC in 2008, €70k for Simon Communities in 2009, and last year, €86k for Barnardos. Isn’t it interesting to see that over the very years that the economy has taken a nose-dive, that something like this, a service designed to raise funds for charity, would take flight? Well, a good idea is a good idea, isn’t it?

But looking at this prompted me to look a little further, so I ran the numbers in TGI. We all have less in our pockets, but as it turns out, people are more likely to give to charity than they were 5 years ago. I’m oddly proud to see that our hardships have reminded us to dig into our pockets a little more frequently, if not deeper.

As far as our consumer behaviour goes, most of us are more closely aligned with our grandparents than with the 2007 version of ourselves. And, we’re told this new behaviour we’ve learned is here to stay. This is the ‘new norm’. But it’s about more than how we spend our money; we seem to be taking more time to enjoy our surroundings, families and communities and we’re caring more for the environment. We’re just…well…..we’re a bit nicer than we used to be. Let’s hope we keep the best of our new behaviours, that we continue to give to charity and as the economy recovers, we carry the habit.